Ballots are returned Tuesday night at the Cullman County Courthouse.

The presidential race topping the 2020 general election ballot drew out far more local voters than this year’s just-concluded midterms, a result reflected in county-level voting data from the Tuesday, Nov. 8 election.

Even as Cullman County registered a higher number of voters between 2020 and 2022, this year’s turnout fell by more than 25 percent from the turnout for the November election two years ago. A total of 26,297 people (out of 63,483 current registered voters) took part in Tuesday’s election, a turnout of 41.42 percent.

In 2020, the county entered the general election with 62,597 registered voters, 41,985 of whom cast a ballot. The county voter turnout in 2020’s presidential race was 67.1 percent — 25.68 percent higher than the turnout on Tuesday.

There were far fewer contested local races this year, and of course no high-profile presidential battle to entice additional voters to the polls. Except for the Alabama House District 12 race between incumbent Republican Corey Harbison and Democratic challenger James Fields, all of the local races featured only unchallenged GOP candidates. Harbison retained his seat Tuesday by earning more than 85 percent of that vote, netting 11,945 votes to Fields’ 2,027.

Straight-party voting dominated the heavily GOP-favored Cullman County ballot this year. From Gov. Kay Ivey (23,251 local votes) all the way down the ballot, no Republican with countywide eligibility received more votes than incumbent GOP sheriff Matt Gentry, who finished his uncontested race with 24,314 votes (99.4 percent).

High percentages and vote totals topping 23,000 were the rule across the board for area GOP candidates this week. But Gentry’s 24,314 votes serves as the high marker of a GOP-heavy baseline that reveals a remarkable local trend: On Tuesday, 16,616 Cullman County voters — more than 68 percent of Gentry’s GOP-topping 24,314 total — filled in a single bubble, submitted their ballot, and then walked away.

That Republican-friendly figure dwarfs straight-party voting from local Democrats on Tuesday, only 957 of whom opted to vote an all-Democrat ticket. If the election had fielded no split tickets and been tallied strictly along straight-party lines, in fact, the GOP would have coasted to a similarly easy victory in Cullman County on Tuesday, with Republicans hoarding 94.02 percent of the straight-party vote.

By comparison, the Democrats’ 957 straight-ticket votes would have landed its candidates a rather distant 5.42 percent of the single-party vote, with the Libertarian Party of Alabama bringing up the rear with 100 straight-party votes (or .57 percent of the straight-party total).

The Cullman County Probate Judge’s Office maintains a publicly-available data tally of all Cullman County votes cast on Tuesday, including a precinct-by-precinct breakdown for each ballot measure and race. Visit www.cullmancourts.org/elections.html online to view the full breakdown of local voting information from this year’s general election.